


Coming Home

by agentmercury



Category: Saving Francesca - Melina Marchetta
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-03
Updated: 2015-05-03
Packaged: 2018-03-28 21:06:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3869794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agentmercury/pseuds/agentmercury
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mia helps Frankie prepare for the wedding. “You accidentally take a train to Woy Woy and get picked up by police, you and Justine and Ned and Tom go on a spontaneous road trip to Brisbane, and I know Justine is a Google wizard, but none of you have found Jimmy?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Coming Home

**Author's Note:**

> "Jimmy, you are not coming home with me." Still waiting for him to come home.

Mia, Francesca, and Will’s mother were on the third round of possible wedding invitations when Frankie sighed and closed the binder. “I can’t do this,” she said, holding the binder to her lap. She felt a frown sitting deep in her eyes; it had been bugging her since she’d said yes.

“Can’t do what?” her mother asked.

“I can’t imagine having this wedding without Jimmy.”

Will’s mother looked vaguely scandalized, but Mia waved her off - “Could you go look at the collection of name plates for the dinner while I talk to Frankie, Josephine, thank you.” - before turning to her daughter.

“Frankie, you’re marrying Will.”

Not an order, never an order; just a reminder.

Francesca’s smile was instinctive - _Will_ called wings to her heart, him with the persistent thought-crease between his eyebrows and careless honesty and enthusiasm and strange, strange chivalry. “Yeah, but Jimmy.”

With a dramatic sigh, Mia gestured over to one of the wedding planner’s assistant. “Can you keep an eye on these? We’re just stepping across the street.”

Leaving their bags and the binders and the outlines in their chairs, mother and daughter hurried through very light traffic to the coffee bar on the corner.

They ordered and picked up their tall vanilla macchiatos before taking a high table by the window. For a moment, they were both quiet, alternating between blowing at their drinks and sipping at the foam.

“All you need for a wedding,” Mia said, “is the groom, honey. Love and Will.”

“Really one and the same thing.”

“For you, perhaps.” Mia laughed at Francesca’s accusatory expression, short-lived as it was. It had been years since Mia’s first brush with severe depression, but the sound of her mother’s happiness, her amusement still made Francesca’s insides flip and cartwheel. “No, no, I love him, too. He makes you happy.”

“Yeah, he does.”

Mia’s hair fell soft around her cheekbones when she tipped her head to the side. “So why Jimmy?”

Francesca looked at the swirl of syrup. It wasn’t a judgmental question, one that was like a heat-seeking missile targeting a weak spot. It was _Talk to me, Robert_. “Were you happy, Mummy?” she said. “When you married Daddy without Nonno there?”

Francesca heard Mia swallow. It could be said this was a new!Mia thing, this hesitancy, this openness with the shadow haunting her. At the same time, it was all old!Mia, the courage to press through. “Of course I was _happy_ ; I was marrying the man I loved - love. Whatever. I just could’ve been… happier. You know that. Is Jimmy your Nonno?”

“If I wanted Nonno to be Captain Von Trapp with mugs of chamomile to hand out as he sings Edelweiss.”

Mia snorted into her cup.

Francesca laughed and she could feel a goofy grin on her face - like Jimmy had described, and at that, the grin settled into a small smile. “Nonno was a big part of your heart, Mummy, and my friends - especially Jimmy - that year…” She dipped her finger into her foam and stuck it in her mouth. “He was there for me and for Tom, even before Tom went off and did his best impression of a dickhead for like a year, and never really asked for anything but us. Everyone else is going to be there and I feel like - no, I know Jimmy’s absence will be a huge hole.”

Sipping at her macchiato, Mia said, “I get that. I was there that year - at least, _he_ was there that year. He… Jimmy’s special.”

“He’s a surprise,” Francesca agreed.

“Why haven’t you found him?” Mia settled back in her chair, hands in her lap. She looked at Francesca steady like. “You accidentally take a train to Woy Woy and get picked up by police, you and Justine and Ned and Tom go on a spontaneous road trip to Brisbane, and I _know_ Justine is a Google wizard, but none of you have found Jimmy?”

“We haven’t tried, not really,” Francesca said, and it hurt, but not in the way she wished it would. It didn’t hurt like failure and disappointment; it hurt like weary acceptance. “Mummy, he wandered into the brush and he hasn’t come back. Yet.” It had to be ‘yet’.

“So you’re going to wait?”

The breath shuddered out of Francesca, catching against the sides of her throat. She watched the sun spill through and waver in the spaces between umbrellas on the sidewalk. “He is waiting to come back on his own time.”

Mia leaned forward, brushed hair out of Francesca’s face. “And what if he’s waiting for all of you to come for him, Frankie?” she asked. “What if he’s waiting for you to get him out of bed? What if Jimmy’s waiting for you? Are you all going to wait on waiting?”


End file.
